[HN Gopher] Guide to speaking at tech conferences
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Guide to speaking at tech conferences
Author : karlhughes
Score : 109 points
Date : 2020-01-01 18:44 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cfpland.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cfpland.com)
| hnbreak wrote:
| Speaking at conferences is a strong urge in the dev community.
| Some do it because they want to improve their public speaking
| skills or to prove something to themselves ('I can be as outgoing
| as the marketing guy next door, har har'). Or to improve their
| market value.
|
| In my early days, I had also this urge but it's wrong. The whole
| post is wrong. Ask yourself WHY you want to speak at tech
| conferences. What's the aim of your speech? Most of the times and
| most people don't have an answer.
|
| You want to have nice Google SERPs on your name?
|
| Why?
|
| To increase your personal market value?
|
| You think one speech is enough?
|
| Not at all. You need so much more. A topic, more than your vim
| config or some Github repo which got five stars. You need
| achievements, first. You need a damn story, a sharp profile. Then
| go out and hold 10 talks/year, shotgun Google's video search with
| your talks. I promise you, once you have a good story, public
| speaking is easy, it feels like talking. But if you don't have
| anything to tell you sound like the odd & boring AWS sales guy
| who wants to sell some new overpriced AWS service and paid for
| the speaking slot.
|
| And be aware that public talks don't necessarily improve your
| market value. One so-so talk on Youtube about your vim config at
| some third-class conference is worse than nothing. Besides, most
| tech conference are third-class created by some greedy local
| meetup tycoon rebranding his useless meetups. The best is that
| the meetup tycoon gets free content, YOU on stage, on Youtube,
| for a crappy conference he sold tickets for 500 bucks. He doesn't
| care if the entire world makes fun of your speech about your vim
| config.
|
| I remember one guy who did music with hard-coded JS decades ago,
| not impressive, maybe a bit interesting. This guy was on several
| speaking gigs with always the same topic, his stupid JS music.
| After the third time I saw him, I started to hate him, I swore to
| never hire this person. Remember, speaking can backfire if you
| don't have a topic.
|
| I've another guy: Jared, he wrote amazing Formik, a great lib.
| His talks though are so-so, promoting his company (I think it's
| just a shell for him freelancing) too much and yeah not on par
| with his repo. When seeing his talks on a shabby meetup, my first
| thought was, better fix your repo's issues instead of doing this
| self-promotion. Again: it backfired and didn't improve his market
| value. Rather the opposite, before I thought Formik, Jared, the
| king. Once I saw the speaches, OMG, Jared got jarring.
|
| I rather prefer a cozy Youtube video on a living room couch on
| Svelte like from the Youtuber Harry Wolff (highly recommended!!!
| => [1]). Good speakers like Harry are entertainers, they
| understand to be authentic without even trying and it's hard to
| deconstruct what they do right.
|
| So, public speaking skills are overrated. It's enough to be able
| to moderate a meeting/standup for 10-50 people. To do proper
| speaking, you need to do it frequently, you need to understand
| entertainment, you need to get deeply into story telling, how to
| plot narratives, sometimes you need script writers, media
| trainers and you MUST be in shape, no need to look like James
| Bond but getting on keto few weeks before sounds like a plan.
|
| If you still think you should be a public speaker, test if you
| have the basics for being a good entertainer. Do internal
| presentation at your company, bigger ones where you invite
| multiple departments, do Youtube videos, screen recordings. Test
| how people react on your voice, on your appearance, your jokes,
| If you see positive signals or slight growth, continue.
|
| Otherwise just don't. Public speaking is a profession and imagine
| a public speaker who wants to pair-program with you in C++. I
| mean why not? If you can hold a speech he should be able to write
| some kernel code.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPVQ3M9b6CY
| Buge wrote:
| Are there many talks about a single person's vim config? That
| seems like a poor topic to me, and I'm not sure how many people
| would consider it a good idea.
| hnbreak wrote:
| It just a lazy analogy for many useless talks. Btw, I LOVE
| talking about my vim config in a small setting like a 10
| person meetup just because I LOVE vim and like to be with
| like-minded people. But I'd never do a public speech on it
| because it's no achievement and more important: my vim config
| is not my identity (maybe a bit ;)
| 1337biz wrote:
| This is incredibly negative. You could make the same comment
| about any public form of communication. Speeches, articles,
| heck even a Twitter post.
|
| This is an absolutely destructive viewpoint in particular for
| all those brilliant people who do interesting stuff but never
| think they are ready to share their story just because they are
| no Jimmy Fallon. Being bad at things in the beginning is part
| of every journey.
| ghaff wrote:
| That was my initial reaction as well. Basically, never be a
| first-time speaker because you might not be perfect, at which
| point you might as well get out of the field.
|
| I'm sure I'd cringe to see early talks I gave at events. (To
| say nothing of more recent ones that just didn't come
| together as I intended. Or, heck, even IMO good ones that
| aren't as good as awesome speakers give.)
| hnbreak wrote:
| > I'm sure I'd cringe to see early talks I gave at events.
|
| Maybe that's the reason you are not making 500k/yr because
| those videos are still out.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop taking this or any other HN thread
| further into flamewar? That's not what we're after here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| tititi wrote:
| The gall of you to say someone was being aggressive in a
| response to you when you're writing a comment like this.
| geofft wrote:
| > _Otherwise just don 't. Public speaking is a profession and
| imagine a public speaker who wants to pair-program with you in
| C++. I mean why not? If you can hold a speech he should be able
| to write some kernel code._
|
| I hereby make a standing offer to work with any professional
| public speaker to pair with them to write kernel code. Like
| public speaking, it's a learnable (and teachable) skill, and if
| you're interested in it, nobody should stand in your way and
| say it's not worth your time or that it's pointless.
|
| (You, meanwhile, should put a name to your comment so that we
| can swear never to hire you. You're a 0.1x engineer: your
| presence on a team will demotivate other people in the
| organization.)
| tititi wrote:
| I'm an occasional lurker here but I created this account
| because of this comment as it represents what is so annoying
| about this community sometimes.
|
| What exactly are you aiming to achieve with this comment?
| Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all.
|
| > In my early days, I had also this urge but it's wrong. The
| whole post is wrong. Ask yourself WHY you want to speak at tech
| conferences. What's the aim of your speech? Most of the times
| and most people don't have an answer.
|
| Who are you to say it's wrong? Even if people are doing it for
| the wrong reasons, the fact that they are doing it means that
| this post is relevant to them. To call the post "wrong" is so
| arrogant and adds nothing to the contribution. All it does is
| give you a useless delusion of grandeur that makes you think
| you know better than this author, or those that find value in
| the post.
|
| > - To increase your personal market value? You think one
| speech is enough? Not at all. You need so much more. A topic,
| more than your vim config or some Github repo which got five
| stars. You need achievements, first. You need a damn story, a
| sharp profile. Then go out and hold 10 talks/year, shotgun
| Google's video search with your talks.
|
| This makes no sense. If you're still advocating for eventually
| going to give talks, why did you start off by calling this post
| wrong when it gives advice to people that want to speak?
|
| > And be aware that public talks don't necessarily improve your
| market value. One so-so talk on Youtube about your vim config
| at some third-class conference is worse than nothing. Besides,
| most tech conference are third-class.
|
| This sounds like a personal problem for you. And no, one so-so
| talk on Youtube about your vim config at some third-class
| conference isn't necessarily worse than nothing
|
| > Public speaking skills are overrated. It's enough to be able
| to moderate a meeting/standup for 10-50 people. To do proper
| speaking, you need to do it frequently, you need to understand
| entertainment, sometimes you need script writers, media
| trainers, etc.
|
| If you're moderating a meeting with 10-50 people, good public
| speaking skills will go a long way into making the meeting
| worthwhile for the attendees.
|
| I have no relation to the author of this post, but it's jarring
| seeing comments like that throw away nuance and kindness, and
| let out arrogant statements all under the guise of
| intellectualism.
| hotasice wrote:
| Long term lurker as well, but your comment comes off in bad
| faith. When you decide to try and break apart each point
| piece by piece to address, instead of his whole argument as a
| whole, it signals that you're only trying to argue for
| arguement's sake. Please don't do this, because it ruins the
| vibe.[0]
|
| In one enormous post, you have managed to tip-toe the line of
| civility with passive aggression, but also outright hostility
| "so arrogant," that it comes into question whether or not the
| GP's comment was directed at your specific demogrpahic:
| people that do things because they feel they want to, and not
| because they have thought it through.
|
| Perhaps you should ask yourself the same question: "What
| exactly are you aiming to achieve with this comment?"
|
| From an onlooker's perspective, it comes off as needlessly
| aggressive, but without clear motive. One could say the only
| purpose of your comment was to express that aggression, and
| not to spur interesting or novel dicussion.
|
| In that likely case, you are posting in bad faith, and as you
| said "sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all."
|
| [0] I've been around message boards since usenet. This
| behavior isn't new, and neither is it appreciated.
| tititi wrote:
| If your assessment is that my comment was to express
| aggression, that would be correct. I thought about what I
| was trying to achieve and I felt that I didn't owe the OP
| any grace, since he failed to extend grace to the author of
| the post. My goal was to express how I felt about the OP's
| comment as directly as I could, so they could perhaps
| consider it the next time they want to make another comment
| like that. Whether or not being less aggressive would make
| my point more useful is a separate discussion, but at the
| time of writing the comment, I opted for a bit of
| aggression.
|
| And FYI, I've not spoken at any conference and I have no
| interest in speaking at one, so I don't think the comment
| was directed at my demographic, I just found it to be
| distasteful.
| hotasice wrote:
| I thank you for expressing self-awareness and civility in
| your reply.
|
| Emotions are what make us human. Complex expressions of
| neural impulses that manifest as many different feelings
| which move us to action. However, like any other impulse,
| the understanding of and their proper utilization, always
| brings greater utility to one's life.
|
| We can all agree that unbridled emotional expression --
| that is the actions those emotions move us to do -- can
| become harmful by their unchecked nature. We can also all
| agree that emotions have a purpose, and to repress them
| is not the best of decisions.
|
| Then perhaps there is a useful middle ground. Call it,
| "emotion, but in moderation." That by stepping back and
| analyzing our emotions, what caused them to appear, and
| why we feel the way we feel, we can in-turn make better,
| more productice decisions.
|
| What flowers from this post, is of no concern of mine,
| but I felt moved to plant these seeds.
| hnbreak wrote:
| My tone is harsh because bad public speaking significantly
| damages your profile => your career => salary => $$/year.
|
| ps: I just read your reply, in the meantime I edited/extended
| my initial post
| ghaff wrote:
| Honestly, that seems like an overstatement. The same could
| be said for anything finding its way onto the internet that
| doesn't represent you at your current best. Maybe if you're
| a really bad speaker/writer/etc. and, for whatever reason,
| think you will never get better you should be cautious
| about doing anything that will expose you online. But I'd
| suggest simply improving might be a better approach.
|
| In the case of speaking specifically, if you _don 't_ start
| off giving maybe so-so talks at a Meetup, you're probably
| never going to get better.
|
| ADDED: To your example. So if your first C++ code doesn't
| hit it out of the park, you should just give up?
| hnbreak wrote:
| Why are you aggressive? I am just saying public speaking
| is a core asset of a slightly different career path. You
| can follow this and there're many career opportunities,
| especially in tech marketing/dev evangelizing but it's a
| different path than being an engineer, coding all day or
| a managing engineer heading devs in the right direction.
|
| Holding good speeches is hard work and takes time.
| Writing good code, sketching solid abstractions is hard
| work and takes time as well. Focus on one. And if your
| code/repo/whatever got 100K stars on Github, then of
| course hold a speech, it will be easy because everybody
| want just to see THAT guy. It's complex and this notion,
| everybody should hold speeches yes, but a guide to
| speaking at tech conferences? IDK.
|
| If people like public speaking and want to center the
| career around it, great. But then they need to commit, to
| do it frequently and of course they start small. But it
| doesn't make sense to do a recorded talk at a conference
| if you don't have any experience and do it only once.
| Like the speaker who writes a 10-liner C++, for what??
| Who shall hire that C++ coding speaker? Oh wait, he could
| moderate a tech conference, because he wrote 10 lines
| C++... or maybe not.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't think I was being aggressive. To the degree I
| was, it's because I do think--as an industry--we should
| encourage people who don't consider themselves part of
| the established elite to put themselves out in public.
|
| And I know tons of people who do public speaking where it
| isn't a career path or even (really) their primary day
| job--a number of whom are quite good about it.
|
| Of course, if you have nothing to talk about you
| shouldn't give a talk. But I wouldn't discourage anyone
| who has something they want to share--even if it's
| unrelated to their day-to-day work or it's potentially
| trivial. It's frankly the job of the conference
| organizers to decide whether it's potentially relevant
| and interesting to attendees.
| hnbreak wrote:
| anyone who has something they want to share != speaking
| at tech conferences
| hotasice wrote:
| I'm an obstinate lurker of HN, but I felt moved to create an
| account to address your post -- and another's.
|
| It was a breath of fresh air to read your experiences, and the
| way you decided to put into writing what your intuition had
| surmised from said experiences. I read forums religiously to
| keep my own worldview fresh and to stave off the natural human
| inclination to bring myself into a homeostatic perception
| bubble.
|
| Uncannily, one of the most common things I've found is the
| exact type of person you've described: one that doesn't think
| about what value their post will bring to others, but only to
| post for posting's sake. You and your post are an exceptional
| delight, and I thank you for sharing.
|
| The world -- and by extension the internet, a microcosm of said
| world -- is overrun with wishy-washy expression that only
| appears to express a lot, but when stripped of all it's fat,
| manages to express nothing at all (f.e speaking a lot, but
| saying little).
|
| As an addendum, my apologies for coming off in the same manner
| as the subject of your ire. Appearances are important, after
| all.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| Wonderful work. Hopefully this will go a long way toward
| accomplishing my related new years resolution to speak at tech
| conferences :)!
| chestermacwerth wrote:
| Eventually ideas like this always eat theirselves. The
| "speaking at conference" meme is now thoroughly eaten; there's
| a cottage industry of bullshit around the whole thing. People
| do it now to advance their careers and achieve an extremely
| modest amount of e-fame. Most talks are pointless. It's people
| giving talks to give talks about helping other people give
| takls about giving talks for their boss's arbitrary stipulation
| that giving talks is a required feature for "team lead"
| engineers, etc..
| karlhughes wrote:
| That's pretty cynical, but I'll admit there's some truth to
| it.
|
| I take the optimist's view of it though: speaking is a good
| way to advance your career, but with so many new people
| getting into software development it's also a great way to
| teach others. Even if you can watch the video online,
| conferences allow you to actually meet and ask questions of
| others who know things you don't.
|
| It's hard to replicate these interactions online.
| ghaff wrote:
| What's with the anger?
|
| If it's something you don't want to do, don't. There are
| plenty of people who get a lot of value out of the
| interactions and maybe part of the "boss's arbitrary
| stipulation" is that there is value to the company through
| promoting technologies/etc. at events.
|
| I get that a lot of people are cynical about conferences. And
| I sometimes am one of them. But a lot of people and
| organizations find them worthwhile.
| hayksaakian wrote:
| Thank you for creating this, I've already shared it with a few
| people
| Ace__ wrote:
| Although I have no interest in speaking at a tech or any
| conference,the sheer amount of work put in meant that I had to
| check it out. Good work mate.
|
| You should really add the ability to exchange email for a
| downloadable PDF of the guide. And that bottom bar that slides in
| "20+ new CFPs every week", it won't close no matter how many
| times I click on x. Browser: Chrome.
|
| Cheers, Ace.
| karlhughes wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up, and I appreciate the kind words.
|
| I interviewed over 30 speakers myself, plus read through
| several dozen articles to compile this guide.
|
| I will eventually offer a PDF download option, but I wanted to
| start off by putting it out there for free to the public. After
| I've made some revisions and improvements and it's a bit more
| stable I'll go the ebook route too.
|
| Thanks again!
| ghaff wrote:
| Look forward to reading it as it's something I do a lot of.
| Thanks!
| macintux wrote:
| I'd long since forgotten I created a gist for speaking resources,
| but I've added this and a few other links, and cleaned up some
| older broken (sigh) links:
|
| https://gist.github.com/macintux/5354837
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| In the list of 11 reasons people speak at conferences, I can't
| help but see that a good 7 of them or so are vanity related. I
| think this is the number 1 reason I don't speak at conferences
| (and probably the number 1 reason I find conferences to be of
| very limited utility).
| ghaff wrote:
| I'd fully expect "11 reasons people speak at conferences" to
| include a lot of reasons associated with personal benefits.
| (And I'd actually only count 3 of those as being vanity: the
| rush, promotion, and recognition.)
|
| People sure don't speak at conferences so they can spend more
| time at airports and on planes.
|
| Many do also enjoy it for altruistic reasons listed. But
| relatively few people are going to take on tasks that aren't
| also beneficial to themselves personally.
| karlhughes wrote:
| I think this is a fair critique. Many people who are drawn to
| public speaking probably tend toward the "vain" side of the
| personality spectrum.
|
| Anecdotally, I acted in a play when I was in college. Almost
| every person in it was studying acting, and the level of self-
| absorption was overpowering at times.
|
| All that said, speakers and topics are only a small portion of
| what I find valuable about attending a conference anyway. Most
| of the opportunity for learning and advancement comes in
| meeting other people you wouldn't have been able to connect
| with otherwise.
| ghaff wrote:
| Whether or not it's vanity, there's an element of enjoying
| being in the public eye--at least in some contexts. If
| someone really doesn't like being publicly visible they're
| mostly going to self-select out of being a speaker unless
| they have some other compelling motivation for doing so.
|
| Whether or not it comes naturally or it's a persona they've
| developed for professional reasons, most public speakers like
| the energy of the crowd or other audience. (Personally, I'm
| much more comfortable live than on video--which is a somewhat
| different skill.)
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